24. Plodding Along

Period: October 2013 - December 2013

Returning to my old job was good for me. Being hospitality, there was a high turnover of staff so plenty of new people to get to know, and enough of the same team to feel right at home straight away. But I still held back and kept my distance, lacking in confidence and practice at forming friendships.

I just couldn't understand why I wasn't happy to have my health back. In reality, I was delighted to be well again, but for so long my daily routine and thoughts had been dictated by my Crohn's symptoms - I didn't really know where to start to get back to normal. During this period, I found myself just plodding along, trying to get the dreaded depression monkey off my back but lacking the tools, support and motivation. What's more, I could no longer blame my sour mood on the Crohn's symptoms and instead I started to blame myself.

By this time, I had lost contact with ALL of my old friends. I find it difficult to say "no" and as my health had deteriorated, instead of picking up the phone, being honest and saying "sorry I can't come out tonight, I'm not really feeling up to it", I chose to ignore the phone, or just turn it off completely for extended periods of time. For some reason, I had felt like my friends may not believe me, or worse still, think I was using the illness as an excuse. Gradually the phone had stopped ringing and before I had realised it, I was completely alone. It had also been a long time since I had encouraged new friendships, as I just didn't feel like I had much to offer in that way of time or fun! 

This was a marked difference from my attitude and personality just three years previously when I had set off backpacking to NZ, and I struggled to reconcile myself with these changes in my character. I felt that on the outside I was still the same person, at least that is what I tried to present to the world, and if I allowed myself to form close friends they would soon realise that the real me was boring and suicidal, which I couldn't handle. It felt like a catch-22 situation. I couldn't get in touch with old friends without explaining that I had frozen them out because of depression; I couldn't make knew friends because they would quickly realise I had depression and I couldn't get out of depression because of the overwhelming loneliness.